#F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

[tediousreviews]

Analog (June 1999)

And Analog again. It's part two of three on our latest serial, one novella, one novelette, and a trio of short stories.

Serial

The Quantum Rose (Part Two of Three), Catherine Asaro

Let's see, our heiress is enjoying her surprise marriage she never knew she wanted with the rich and handsome stranger from another world. Well she’s enjoying the parts that don’t involve dealing with his massive drinking problem, volatile temper, and trauma issues. Oh, and her former fiance decides to kidnap her. So... I mean it's about what I was expecting after last time.

An enjoyable read, and I think better than the first installment.

Novella

The Trees of Verita, Wolf Read

Family drama, giant trees, and hilariously implausible biology centered around the light from supernovas.

Novelette

At the Zoo, Rick Shelly

Why are so many aliens so proficient at hacking?

Short Stories

The Karma Sutra, Don D'Ammassa

The MPA is watching you masturbate. I mean, more than they do already.

Uncertainly Yours, Bill Johnson

Quantum mumble mumble magic.

Time Lines, F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

Time travel, Hitler, and opening concession stands for the people who kill him.

Hey look, it's every time travel story ever written. Not that there's anything wrong with an unoriginal story if it's well written. It's just that if stories are sandwiches, then time travel is egg salad and I absolutely hate eggs. But I'm sure this was an excellent example despite my finding it viscerally unpleasant.

Final Thoughts

I need to lose some weight again. When I pack on the pounds I start to get heartburn and with the food holidays coming up I don't want to end up taking antacids like they were candy for the next three months.

[wdhmbt]

F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's review of "Kings In Middle Italy"

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: “Put Back That Universe!” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

So that title should clue you in how delightful this story is going to end up being.

Very.

Noted ne’erdowell Smedley Faversham travels back to before the beginning of the Universe to steal it. The entire universe. At the moment of the Big Bang when its just a singularity that once could pick up and stick in one’s pocket and go strolling away.

That is exactly what I hoped the story would be when I saw the title.

Although some may naysay the thing as silly.

At this point, the Gentle Reader may wonder how Smedley Faversham was able to stay alive, since the oxygen molecules necessary for breathing (to say nothing of chuckling) had not yet been created by the cosmic aftereffects of the Big Bang. Hence, thus, and consequently there was no air for Smedley to breathe while he was standing at a slight distance in Space-Time from the creation of the universe. For that matter - or lack of matter - there was nothing solid for Smedley to be standing on, since all of the atomic mass in all the infinite dimensions of the universe (minus 189 subatomic particles which still hadn’t arrived yet, and Smedley himself) had already converged into the all-consuming hypersphere. By this same application of pitiless logic, the Gentle Readers may also wonder how Smedley was able to see the hyphersphere, since nearly all the photons in the universe were now inside the gravity well of the sphere, beyond reach of Smedley’s optic nerves.

The Gentle Readers should mind their damned business.

Anyway, Smedley’s wait is interrupted by a subatomic particle. He can tell its a subatomic particle because it has “I AM A SUBATOMIC PARTICLE. I AM NOT A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER IN DISGUISE” written on it.

BUT PLOT TWIST, its Chrono-Constable Newgate Callender of the Paradox Patrol disguised as a quark (he’s plainclothes).

Newgate demands to know what Smedley is doing and Smedley confesses to the biggest heist in... well I can’t say history or time because they’re outside it.

Smedley had planned to file the serial numbers off, maybe repaint the universe so nobody could prove he didn’t obtain it legally. Maybe sell it for parts - break it up into separate galaxies and sell them one at a time. Say they fell off the back of a truck.

But Newgate points out that there is nobody to sell it too. If you take the universe before its created, nobody will be around.

Ah but what about alternate universes? Look around, do you see any? Clearly alternate universes sprang into being from the same Big Bang.

Which fails to happen. By traveling back in time to before the Event 1, Smedley took energy out of the system and now there’s not enough for the critical mass that would start existence.

And that’s definitely a crime. Newgate decides to charge him with the murder of everybody in the universe as well as all the property damage. In one courts? Under what laws? They don’t exist anymore, Smedley protests.

Newgate will think of something.

Alternatively, Smedley decides to destroy the evidence and eats the proto-universe.

But the thermal energy of his heartburn is just the last bit of energy the big bang needs and the universe happens, in Smedley’s stomach.

He wakes up shackled to a bed in the paradox patrol headquarters. Luckily, curry is notorious about how fast it passes through the digestive system. So the universe escaped Smedley before anything bad happened to him.

Although, due to him, the red shift is now orange shift. Way to go, Smedley.

However, since what he did happened outside the universe, it happened outside Space and Time so it technically never took place.

“Looks like you’ve beaten the rap... again, Faversham.”

And for some reason, Newgate’s sister wants to invite Smedley to dinner with the family in celebration of her promotion for busting ‘a gang of time-traveling creationists who went back to Olduvai Gorge during the Pleistocene epoch and tried to murder all the hominids.’

Smedley, however, is not hungry. Eating all matter will do that to a person.

[riffsandfragments]

This sounds like a Jonathan Safran Foer novel.